Posted by
Liana
at
5:59 PM
Butterflies. Sweet nothings. Amazing Beauty. Adventure. Friendship. Passion. Romance. Kindness. Hope. Faith. Weddings. Children. Sacrifice. Choice. Truth. Endurance.
“What is LOVE?” I asked for the twentieth time this year. We’d studied it in small group, I’d asked three or four audiences what they believe love is, and witnessed handfuls and handfuls of weddings where that elusive yet wonderfully great L.O.V.E. had been the celebration at hand between two people.
Could it be all of these things and more? How can we say “I love you” to some and it’s so difficult to say to others? Is it the same across friends, family, strangers, and lovers? Is it a noun or verb? Something we control or cannot? Is it a feeling or an action?
If love is “the greatest” then why is there so much divorce, heartache, and relationships gone bad? Why do the romances on TV never seem to work out, except in the cheesy chick-flicks where we know the ending before it’s even close?
Is it perhaps that we’ve forgotten to ask what love really is?
My answers came slowly... it took years I see now... but it’s become so blatantly clear these past few months... what we’ve been missing out on.... not realizing.
You see, we only have one word for love in english and many other languages. So I took it back to the root.... finding that there are in fact many different definitions of love.
There is the kind of love that we see on prime-time TV, that lasts only long enough before the butterflies die down, beauty fades, interests change, and people become bored or have tired out the relationship. It hides in the disguise of passion, “love at first sight,” heated romances... the greeks have a specific word for it: EROS. Eros is the selfish love of longing and desire. It’s not the longing and desire that is bad about it (after all God did create that ... but he created it for good, not evil).... but it’s the controlling nature of Eros love that is bad. Feelings of this type of love can create intimacy that overpowers reason...
Then there is PHILOS. Another word for love, the Greeks used to describe Friend Love. Brotherly love. To have mutual interests, be there for each other, celebrate each other, and put one above another. We’re called to this kind of love, but is it enough? Will there still be betrayals from friends? Yes. Sadly, yes. Philos, like Eros, is not “the greatest” in my humble opinion.
The GREATEST of these is AGAPE love. Agape can be all those things plus so much more. I don’t think our human brains can even dream up how amazing it is. Agape love is the divine, caring, sacrificial love. The kind of love that would never be fully explained on mere pages and surely deserves a post all it’s own.....
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